The Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) conference is the annual meeting of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated in the United States in 1997. In 2008 ISMB will be held in Toronto, Canada as a conference of approximately 2000 attendees, including up to 40% students/post doctoral researchers. As a multidisciplinary conference rich in diversity, ISMB brings together graduate students, post doctoral researchers, faculty, research staff and senior scientists of many different nationalities, all of whom are studying or working in computer science, molecular biology, mathematics and/or statistics. The ISMB meeting series bring biologists and computational scientists together to focus on research centered on actual biological problems rather than simply theoretical calculations. The combined focus on "intelligent systems" and actual biological data makes ISMB a unique and highly relevant meeting, and many years of experience in producing the event has resulted in a consistently well organized, well attended, and highly respected annual conference. The scientific program for each ISMB meeting comprises research papers selected by a rigorous peer review process. As an example, for ISMB 2007 417 papers were submitted and 66 were selected for presentation at the meeting. Each accepted paper will be reviewed by at least two members of the program committee, and approved by a topic Area Chair, insuring that the highest possible standards are achieved and the highest quality of work is presented. The specific areas represented in the conference vary each year depending on the areas that researchers find most interesting and innovative, and therefore submit as papers. The core of ISCB's mission is, "To advance the scientific understanding of living systems through computation." The ISMB conference has provided an annual forum for disseminating the latest developments in bioinformatics since 1993, thus serving as a key vehicle for achievement of the Society's mission. Past ISMB conferences have drawn attendees from as many as 48 countries, and attendance has grown from 130 at the first meeting, to 2136 at the 2004 conference. Since 2000 the conference location has been purposefully alternated between North America, Europe, and non-North American/non-European sites to foster international exchange and collaboration. This proposal seeks to secure funding to assist students and junior researchers in attending the conference, thus enabling them to quickly come up to speed in the latest research of their own areas as well as areas that may be new to them. 1 Public Health Benefits The ISMB conference presents the latest research methods and results developed through the application of computer programming to the study of biological sciences, including advances in sequencing genomes that may lead to a better understanding of how, for instance, cells interact for the treatment of diseases such as cancer. Additionally, presentations may describe methods and biological advances associated with the analysis of the existing biological literature, including benchmarking experiments, to create a better public understanding of scientific research reports. Overall, the ISMB conference serves to educate attendees on the latest developments that will further drive the research methods and results of the field of computational biology, and those students and scientists in attendance will be able to return to their labs to apply what they have learned as they advance their own research efforts. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]